


now or never

by brokenlikeastitch



Series: second act [1]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV)
Genre: College AU, F/M, Song fic, Takes place in the modern day, basically a rewrite, no one is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-29
Updated: 2020-10-29
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:33:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27264301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenlikeastitch/pseuds/brokenlikeastitch
Summary: and even if we hit the groundwe'll still fly
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Series: second act [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1990723
Comments: 3
Kudos: 118





	now or never

**Author's Note:**

> hi, this is part one of my au series  
> i'll be writing a fic for every song on the soundtrack from start to finish, so a total of 15 parts.  
> only the first two parts will be song fics as i establish background so if that's not your thing, bear with me, i promise it's only temporary

Luke held up the brochure with  **Change Your Life, Start Here** emblazoned across the front and smiled at the boys gathered around him, “We’re so close, boys, I can taste it.”

Reggie grabbed his shoulders and pulled him into a hug, “You sure it’s not just the pizza we just ate.”

Alex snorted and Luke rolled his eyes, “Yeah, whatever, let me just soak it in. Being in the big city, in a good program, we’re so close to getting discovered, to making it big.”

Bobby plucked the brochure out of Luke’s fingers with a wry grin, “Let’s just get back to practicing, yeah?”

_ Take off, last stop / Countdown till we blast open the top / Face first, full charge / Electric hammer to the heart _

And just as everything seemed to be rolling along, the boys suddenly slammed into a wall. Luke was sprawled on the couch in Reggie’s parents’ house, Alex on the floor next to him, when Bobby walked in looking anxious. 

“I’m out,” Bobby was saying when Reggie walked into the room holding a bag of chips.

Luke looked like he’d been punched and Alex’s eyebrows were up around his hairline. Reggie froze, “What’s happening?”

“Bobby,” Alex gestured wildly at him, “has just informed us that he won’t be attending USC with us and he’s quitting Sunset Curve.”

“What?!” Reggie yelped as Luke’s eyes started to water.

“Come on guys,” Bobby sighed, “you knew rock music wasn’t my passion, I got an opportunity too good to pass up.”

“What could be better than this?” Luke asked, voice quieter than usual.

“Julliard.”

“Since when have you wanted to go east coast?” Alex asked defensively, arms crossed.

“Since always, you guys just never asked.”

“I didn’t know we had to, I thought we were all on the same page!” Luke snapped, standing suddenly.

Bobby shrugged, looking uncomfortable, “Yeah, well, I can’t let this opportunity pass me by.”

“But we’re family,” Luke tried one last time.

With a wobbly smile, Bobby gave them one last, “I’m so sorry, but you guys can do it without me.”

And over the next few weeks, it really seemed like they couldn’t. The only way Luke could describe it was stalled. Every time he tried to write, nothing of substance ended up on the page. He was never the type to buy a new notebook before finishing the one he was using, but with all the torn out pages, Luke considered buying one for the duration of his slump.

Reggie noticed songs didn’t feel the same without their rhythm guitarist. He noticed Luke looking over to where Bobby normally stood and couldn’t stop the pang in his chest every time Luke’s face dropped.

_ Clocks move forward / But we don't get older, no / Kept on climbing / Till our stars collided / And all the times we fell behind / Were just the keys to paradise _

Luke was already awake when Reggie dragged himself out of bed one morning, drinking coffee, half slumped over a notebook. His pen was dragging aimlessly as he doodled in the corner of the page and he smiled sleepily at Reggie, “Morning.”

“Morning. Make any for me?”

“In the pot.”

“Sweet, thanks,” he poured himself a cup and sat down, “write anything good?”

Luke shook his head, “I wish.”

Reggie hummed thoughtfully and took a sip before telling him, “Alex is coming by later, we need to sign a lease soon.”

Yawning loudly, Luke nodded, “Sounds good. I’m just gonna take a shower first.”

“Maybe a nap too,” Reggie suggested as Luke slowly dragged his feet down the hallway, clutching the mug.

“I’m good, I promise,” Luke called back, a huge yawn interrupting his sentence midway through.

Reggie was definitely worried about Luke, but it wasn’t until Alex found the crinkled, torn out sheets under the couch Luke had been crashing on. Holding them up, Alex asked him, “Has he even been sleeping?”

Reggie sighed, “I don’t know, dude. Probably not.”

They ended up apartment hunting without him. Alex found him crashed on Reggie’s bed, and they decided to leave him there. 

“He needs it,” Alex suggested.

_ Don't look down / 'Cause we're still rising up right now / And even if we hit the ground / We'll still fly / Keep dreaming like we'll live forever / But live it like it's now or never _

When Alex found Luke asleep in the shower, he decided it was time to do something about it, so he called a band meeting.

“Why are we here?” Luke asked, sitting on the couch next to Reggie, still towel drying his hair.

“We’re here because we’re worried about you,” Alex told him, pacing in front of the two of them.

Luke wrinkled his eyebrows, “Why worried?”

“You aren’t sleeping,” Reggie answered before Alex could, “you’re barely eating, and I can’t even remember the last time you excitedly sent me a video of a melody you’d worked up.”

“I’m just...in a rut,” Luke tried.

Reggie sighed, running a hand through his hair tiredly, “Look, you guys are my brothers, I feel like I’m watching my family fall apart all over again.”

Alex’s face softened, and he sat down on the other side of Reggie, pulling him into a side hug, “We’re gonna be okay, Reg.”

“Are we?” he asked, voice trembling, “because Luke isn’t okay, and you barely come around anymore, remember when you practically lived in this basement?”

“Home hasn’t been, great,” Alex admitted, “my parents were trying to be okay with the gay again, but I overheard my dad saying maybe I’d find a girl soon and I confronted him. It was...eye opening and nasty. But I’m getting better.”

Luke wrapped his arm around Reggie too, “We’re going to be okay, starting over soon, right? We signed a lease, moving in a few weeks.”

Reggie nodded, relaxing a little into both of their arms, “You’re right, of course, both of you.”

“Nap?” Luke asked, tossing his towel to the side and stretched out on the couch, head resting in Alex’s lap.

“Nap,” Alex confirmed, hand going straight to Luke’s still damp hair.

_ Hear the noise, in my head / It's calling out like a voice I can't forget / One life, no regrets / Catch up, got no time to catch my breath _

Packing was difficult.

Luke had barely anything, he’d left home and hadn’t spoken to his parents in months. Alex hated being at his house, his parents never said anything, but he could tell they hated part of him, something he was born with. Reggie’s family was so broken he wanted nothing more than to leave.

One night he was laying in bed with Luke and he whispered, “I’m glad you’re here.”

Luke hummed, “Thanks for letting me stay.”

None of them ever really brought it up explicitly, and they all had different reasons to be happy to get out of their respective childhood homes, but all of them felt a sense of relief.

Luke wasn’t going to be couch surfing anymore, Alex wasn’t going to be the giant unspoken, touchy subject at the dinner table, and Reggie was finally going to escape the incessant fighting he’d been dealing with for years.

“How many shirts should I bring?” Reggie asked Luke who was scribbling in his notebook.

He glanced up, “Um, I guess all of 'em. You plan on coming back home?”

“Yeah, guess you’re right.”

The night before officially moving into the new place, the boys ordered pizza and sat in Reggie’s basement one last time. Alex held up a piece of pizza, “Boys, we may have lost a band member, but we still have our scholarships and we still have each other.”

Luke knocked their hands together, “Hear hear.”

“Brothers for life,” Reggie added, dropping his slice to hold his arms out, “Group hug?”

_ We ain't searching for tomorrow / 'Cause we got all we need today (Today) / Living on a feeling that's been running through our veins / We're the revolution that's been singing in the rain _

The apartment itself was just off campus. It was relatively small and mostly paid for by Reggie’s parents who’d felt so bad about how their fighting had impacted him. Alex and Luke didn’t take much issue with it either.

“God, how much shit could you have possibly brought?” Luke groaned at Alex as he carried yet another unlabelled box up the stairs.

“It’s all important,” Alex defended, setting a box of his own down in his claimed bedroom.

Reggie was already finished with his stuff, starfished on the living room floor, humming something he’d heard Luke humming the night before.

“You like that?” Luke asked when he recognized it.

“Yeah. What is it?”

“Something I’ve been working on, the first thing I’ve really liked since Bobby,” Luke told him, a small smile playing on his lips.

Alex cooed and ruffled his hair, “Baby boy has his mojo back.”

Shoving his hand away, Luke rolled his eyes, “Yeah, yeah. I’ll show you guys later. We got any boxes left?”

“One more,” Alex told him, “and if you go grab it, I’ll start unpacking.”

“Sure,” Luke agreed, letting the apartment door slam shut behind him.

He went down the stairs recklessly, no one else had been on them all day, and he wasn’t expecting a girl to be climbing with a box of her own. Almost slamming into her, he managed to dodge, swearing.

She raised her eyebrows at him, clearly unimpressed, and he grinned sheepishly, “Sorry about that.”

“Maybe you should pay attention.”

And with that, she was gone. Luke stayed frozen on the stairs, staring after her in amazement. Their apartment door opened and he was broken out of his thoughts by Reggie’s yelled, “Paging Lucas, Lucas come in.”

“My name’s not Lucas,” he yelled back, snapping out of it.

“Oh, good, you’re still alive!”

“I’m not dead, Reginald, just got distracted.”

“Well hurry back, Alex is having a crisis. He might want to switch rooms with you.”

Luke rolled his eyes fondly and started back down the stairs. Maybe it wasn’t the fanciest, but he was so glad to finally have his own space with his best friends.

_ When all the days felt black and white / Those were the best shades of my life _

**Author's Note:**

> i'm super proud of this and all the work i've done plotting it out!  
> come chat with me on tumblr [here](https://brokenlikea-stitch.tumblr.com/)  
> stay tuned for part 2 soon!


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